SPOILER ALERT: As a Moments subpage for Sonic Mania, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. Venture past this point only if you dare! You Have Been Warned.
The whole Team Sonic, united at last.
- The opening animation
is very cheerful and full of colorful, spunky character from the three protagonists. The music is also pretty uplifting and it sets the mood of "Yeah! Sonic's back, just the way you remember it from when you were a kid!" - After Puyo Puyo Tetris's rave success, to actually have a fully playable remake of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine as a boss fight, as well as unlockable mini-game, in a tribute game such as this shows SEGA does remember that Puyo Puyo made Sonic great as well.
- It's also the first time that the mainstream Sonic and Eggman challenged each other to Puyo Puyo, since Sonic never appeared in Mean Bean Machine, and it was one of the cartoon versions of Robotnik in the original game to boot!
- Polygon Jim was a well-known and prolific member of the Sonic fangames community, who tragically died in a car accident in 2013. Among his projects was "Motobug the Badnik in Sonic the Hedgehog", in which a slow-moving Motobug replaced Sonic as the playable character in Sonic 1. The badnik had a ridiculous telescopic wheel that fully extended whenever it jumped. In Sonic Mania, the Heavy Rider constantly rides on a highly aggressive Motobug. When you finally battle it as Sonic or Tails in Lava Reef Act 2, it sometimes jumps over you using that same telescopic wheel. And if one bothers to read the game's digital manual, they'll find out that the Motobug has a name: Jimmy.
- In Sonic the Hedgehog, there was a badnik named Splats, who resembled a rabbit with a spring for lower legs, who never made it into the final game. Despite being part of development long enough for him to be picked up by ancillary media, he's one of the few classic badniks who never made into the series despite everything, and as a nod to his scrapped status, he even appears among the trashed classic badniks in Flying Battery Zone. But then, just when you thought this was a nod to his fate as the badnik-who-never-was, he appears in the new stage, Press Garden Zone, as a recurring enemy... finally completing his 25 year journey to canonicity! Eggman didn't forget one of his original creations after all!
